The use of packages for a number of household and industrial purposes has gained wide acceptance. For example, bags or liners are commonly used in industrial settings and households to collect garbage or waste.
Waste that is collected in bags and liners can and often does produce unpleasant odors. Malodor can be generated from waste products and from degradation of waste during storage while waiting for removal from the premises. Waste malodor can be a nuisance and thus a method of managing malodor generation is highly desirable for home waste management. It is also desirable that the malodor from home waste can be reduced with a simple and cost effective method.
To address this problem, waste bag manufacturers have combined a scented resin (commonly termed “fragrance”) with one or more polymeric resins during formation of such bags. This method is commonly referred to as “masking.” U.S. Pat. No. 6,921,581, the content of which is incorporated herein in its entirety, discloses an example of the prior art that uses fragrances in the web to mask unpleasant malodor. The scented resin is therefore distributed uniformly throughout the bag. Such a scented waste bag assists in masking, neutralizing, and/or reducing at least some of the odors.
Scented waste bags can have a number of disadvantages. For instance, because the scented resin is distributed throughout the bag, the scent is not concentrated where a user is likely to encounter the unpleasant odors (e.g., the mouth of the bag). Further, manufacturing difficulties can arise from such bags. To obtain a desired amount of scent proximate the mouth of the bag, excess scent material may need to be distributed throughout the remainder of the bag, which can result in an overpowering scent that may be unpleasant to a user. However, if an insufficient amount of scent material is used, the scent provided may not be adequate to mask, neutralize, or reduce the malodor.
Additionally, because the scented resin used in such waste bags is likely to be more expensive than other polymeric resins used in forming the waste bags, it can be economically undesirable to distribute relatively equal amounts of scented resin throughout the bag. A need therefore exists for a package with a feature that manages odor without such disadvantages.
Furthermore, the scented formulation is commonly incorporated in the web in the melt extrusion of the bag and the scent is released over time. Masking scents usually possess certain characteristic fragrances to mask the malodor so that the fragrance, rather than the malodor, is primarily detected by the human olfactory system. This method achieves some positive odor reduction effect but is not desirable for many consumers due to the strong perception of the masking scent. The perception of scent is very subjective, so it is unlikely to find a scent that would fit all consumers' preferences. And, it is impractical to make products with many types of scent to fit individual customers' taste. Bags or liners with little or no perceptible scent constitute a popular and desirable demand. A method for making a bag or liner being substantially free of fragrance so as to have no perceptible scent but which still substantially reduces malodors from waste products disposed therein is therefore highly desirable. Web materials used to form the foregoing and other packages typically consist of extruded polymers. As used herein, the term “web” includes a variety of thin material structures, such as films, sheets and the like. Such web materials can be used in stock form for the manufacture of wrap or lidding materials. Alternatively, the web materials can be used in forming processes, such as thermoforming processes to form contoured containers, or heat sealing processes to form flexible containers, such as bags. In the case of wrap materials, a cling material or cling layer is typically desirable. In the case of lidding materials, materials that facilitate heat sealing or are otherwise capable of being adhered to another material, for example by way of an adhesive, are typically desirable.